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2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part II

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How can technology and AI transform architecture? Today’s installment of the 2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase explores how technology and AI can evolve the future of architecture and design. These outstanding projects feature innovative building technologies, proposals for adaptive digital systems, generative AI frameworks, and more.

Alpine Assembly: Research, Rescue, and Dwelling in Exposure by Sarah Carpenter, M. Arch. ‘26
Wentworth Institute of Technology | Advisor: Anne-Catrin Schultz & John Ellis

Survival has shifted in the contemporary world to be intensely dependent on unseen systems – communication networks, emergency services, supply chains – while denying the authenticity and poetics of experience in the natural world. While the contemporary design world prioritizes rapid development and aesthetic qualities over site integration, weatherproofing, and passive design strategies, designing through the lens of a hostile site reveals how architecture’s role shifts from serving merely as a shelter to becoming a dwelling that withstands intense exterior elements. Mt. Washington’s Presidential Range has the highest fatalities per vertical foot in the world, experiencing the most hostile environmental conditions in the world in an isolated, resourceless geography. Through a system of adaptable, modular layouts and an additive catalog of prefabricated assemblies responsive to site conditions and predicting changing hostility, architecture becomes reactive and adaptable to a changing climate while exploring the role of controlled systems in isolated environments.

Click here to take a closer look at the project

Instagram: @sarahcarpenter_design

Formation by Rachel Truong, Kevin Sheth & Mathew Shaji Kuzhimannil, M.Arch. ’26
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Advisor: Yun Kyu Yi

Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence have introduced generative tools in the visual arts that can produce images from simple text prompts, challenging long-held assumptions about creativity and expertise. As these technologies mature, they raise critical questions about authorship, agency, and the future role of architects in the design process. This studio engages these questions by investigating how AI might function not merely as a representational aid, but as an active design generator, and by examining how the role of the architect may evolve in response.

Within this broader inquiry, our work focuses on Susung-gu, and more specifically on the Deulan Art Village—an area currently undergoing efforts toward renewal and transformation. Guided by this year’s biennale theme, “The Living Ground of History, Culture, and Existence,” we approached the site as a layered cultural landscape shaped by time, memory, and everyday life. Through an AI-driven design process, we sought to identify and interpret local identities embedded within the area, translating them into architectural form. These identities became generative forces, informing building shapes that are both distinctive and deeply rooted in their context.

Rooted in the site yet expressive in character, the resulting architecture aspires to serve as an inviting landmark and gathering place—one capable of drawing people not only from the local community, but from across the country and beyond, while supporting the Deulan Art Village’s long-term sustainability and its potential to serve as a model for future cultural revitalization.

This project received an honorable mention for the UIUC School of Architecture Graduate Design Excellence Award.

Instagram: @ral_isoa

Data Body Hacking Towards the Construction of the Everyday by Emily Lavoll, M.Arch. ‘26
University of Tennessee – Knoxville | Advisors: Catty Dan Zhang (Advisor), Carl Lostritto, Avigail Sachs, Jennifer Akerman (Committee Members)

Data bodies are constructs of a continuously surveilled world that act as instruments that cast subjective circumstance through the lens of objectivity. In that casting, a parafiction is produced. A blurring of fact and fiction in which the constructed knowledge of a sensing system is mistaken for truth invades the senses as reality itself. Historically, designers and those in power have leveraged this condition to establish enforcement regimes that define the experience of our everyday, collapsing the complexity of bodies, spaces, and behaviors into categorical systems that benefit those who administer them rather than those who inhabit them.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, which claims to reduce this highly nuanced process to a single operation, it has become imperative for designers to interrogate the objectivity these systems assert. No sensor sees the world the same way, and each sensing device constructs its own particular portrait of reality. While a robot vacuum navigating a porch reads its environment through lidar, its body is simultaneously assumed to be a domestic instrument of comfort through human perception. While video feed footage of a doorbell’s sight claims inciting events, its averaged footage retains only the architecture against which every transient body is measured and ultimately dissolved into noise. These devices do not produce reality; they are portals into the particular fantasy each system was designed to maintain.

At the end of the day, however, we trust them. We welcome these systems into our most intimate thresholds, inviting them to resolve our problems in the aim of producing a domesticated comfort. Through this welcoming, we relinquish the autonomy of our own data, allowing it to be absorbed, averaged, and returned to us as a parafiction we did not author. Where these systems produce noise, we have an obligation to interrogate it, hack it, and produce a new parafiction of reality. In this process, we take back that which was relinquished and return intention to it, developing a reality from which those who live in this everyday are the very same in control of it.

This project was awarded the Robert B. Church III Graduate Thesis Award (Architecture, Best Project) and the Faculty Award of Design Excellence for Graduate Final Project. It was also selected as the representative of the 2026 graduating M.Arch class for inclusion in the “2026 Honors Exhibition,” where it was exhibited in the Ewing Gallery, 1715 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, TN (May 11-15, 2026).

Instagram: @emlavoll, @cattydanzhang, @lostritto, @j_akerman, @avigailsachs

less siteless by Grace Hunt, Brad Machado & Nathan Blaim, M.Arch. ’26
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Advisor: Yun Kyu Yi

Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence have introduced generative tools in the visual arts that can produce images from simple text prompts, challenging long-held assumptions about creativity and expertise. As these technologies mature, they raise critical questions about authorship, agency, and the future role of architects in the design process. This studio engages these questions by investigating how AI might function not merely as a representational aid, but as an active design generator, and by examining how the role of the architect may evolve in response.

Within this broader inquiry, our work focuses on Susung-gu, and more specifically on the Deulan Art Village—an area currently undergoing efforts toward renewal and transformation. Guided by this year’s biennale theme, “The Living Ground of History, Culture, and Existence,” we approached the site as a layered cultural landscape shaped by time, memory, and everyday life. Through an AI-driven design process, we sought to identify and interpret local identities embedded within the area, translating them into architectural form. These identities became generative forces, informing building shapes that are both distinctive and deeply rooted in their context.

Rooted in the site yet expressive in character, the resulting architecture aspires to serve as an inviting landmark and gathering place—one capable of drawing people not only from the local community, but from across the country and beyond, while supporting the Deulan Art Village’s long-term sustainability and its potential to serve as a model for future cultural revitalization.

Instagram: @3grace3, @bradleymachado, @ral_isoa

Details and Innovation (ARC 6624-New Tech of Building Enclosures) Anaya Britt, Darien Lawrence, Flor Carty, John Williams, Jalyn Lee, Xiaohua Carter & MaryAnn Miller, M.Arch. ’26
Florida A&M University | Advisor: Mahsan Mohsenin

The goal of this project is to enhance students’ understanding of detailed design and technological aspects of building enclosures. This project asks students to make a detailed physical model of ARC Design Integrated Studio, after comparing different enclosure and assembly systems. The students will build a detailed physical model at the scale of 3/4”=1’ of the foundation-to-roof design that was previously explored in the axonometric drawing. The model should present one bay of the building in two directions. 

Instagram: @famusaet

Parametric Patternmaking: Cultural Codes and Contemporary Fabrication by Abbas Ghaffari & Seyedeh Delaram Khoshhal Ziabari, M.Arch. ’26
Tulane University | Advisor: Ammar Eloueini

This thesis explores how Iranian architectural heritage can inform contemporary wearable design through computational fabrication. The project reinterprets muqarnas, a centuries-old system of geometric vaulting, as a generative framework for creating body-scaled structures. 

Drawing on the evolution of Iranian corner-making techniques, the research translates architectural principles into wearable forms using parametric design tools. A recursive symmetry method developed in Grasshopper generates geometries tailored to the human body, balancing complexity with wearability. 

The final collection includes a 3D-printed bodice, a folded skirt inspired by Rasmi-bandi patterns, and a mask, proposing a new dialogue between cultural heritage, digital fabrication, fashion, and architecture. 

You can take a closer look here.

This project received the Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award at the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment Diploma Ceremony, May 2026.

Instagram: @abbas.ghaffari, @delaramkhoshhal, @eloueini 

Thermal Bodies by Zachary Barnes, M.Arch.’26
Wentworth Institute of Technology | Advisors: Antonio Furgiuele & Anas Sofan

Across the contemporary built environment, thermal comfort is sustained by concealed mechanical infrastructures that stabilize interior climates while distancing architecture from atmospheric engagement. This condition is particularly pronounced in American suburban housing, with its thermally innate envelopes and intensifying climatic pressures such as rising temperatures, prolonged drought, and environmental instability. This thesis investigates how the operational logics of mechanical conditioning can be reinterpreted as spatial, ceramic-printed systems embedded within existing architectural elements. By reclaiming environmental regulation from concealed equipment and re-situating it within architectural form, the research positions architecture as an active mediator between inhabitants and atmosphere, generating gradients of thermal experience that reshape domestic life.

Through site-specific suburban analysis, thermographic imaging, thermodynamic modeling, and iterative clay fabrication, mechanical principles are translated into passive architectural infrastructures inspired by historical forms such as Persian Badgirs. These investigations evaluate airflow modulation and temperature differentials to construct interior climates through spatial and material means, positioning climate mediation as both a technical and social condition. Applied to existing suburban typologies, the thesis considers framing retrofit as a precise and scalable intervention rather than total replacement, positioning the proposed system not only as a mediator between atmosphere and interior dwelling but also as a cultural and educational tool for the future of the built environment and existing housing stock.

This project won the Edward Allen Student Award and the Design Excellence Award (University Recognition). 

Instagram: @Zachtrist_123, @wentwortharchitecture 

Cohabiting the Air: The Aerie as Architecture for Human–Drone Interaction by Lianbin Xu, M.Arch. ’26
Virginia Tech Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center | Advisors: Paul Emmons, chair, Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Ezgi Isbilen

Throughout history, new systems of mobility have transformed not only cities but also the ways architecture organizes space and human experience. Railways redefined urban growth, elevators enabled vertical living, and automobiles reshaped patterns of settlement and circulation. As drones introduce a new aerial dimension to everyday movement, architecture is once again confronted with questions of access, spatial hierarchy, visibility, privacy, and social interaction.

While drones have been widely discussed as logistical tools and technological infrastructure, their architectural implications remain largely unexplored. Unlike previous transportation systems that occupied streets, rail corridors, or enclosed circulation networks, drones operate within a shared aerial realm that is simultaneously visible, dynamic, and difficult to define through conventional architectural boundaries. Their presence introduces new relationships between ground and sky, public and private space, human activity and autonomous systems.

Located in Tysons, Virginia, this thesis asks how architecture might respond when aerial space becomes an active layer of everyday life. Through the design of a high-density mixed-use tower combining residential, retail, and telehealth programs, the project investigates how aerial mobility may reshape amenities, public and private boundaries, and new forms of interaction between people, technology, and space.

Ultimately, The Aerie proposes a framework for understanding drones not simply as tools of efficiency, but as agents capable of reshaping patterns of inhabitation and social life. The project argues that architecture should actively shape how technological innovation is experienced, fostering new forms of coexistence, community, and everyday engagement in an increasingly connected future.

This project was a finalist for the 2026 WAAC Thesis Prize. 

Instagram: @lianbin2024, @vt_waac, @e_isbilen

Stay tuned for Part III!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part XI

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Welcome back to another week of the Study Architecture Student Showcase! In Week XI, we highlight student projects that use space as an avenue to create equitable community resources. From neighborhood civic buildings to multi-faceted housing units, this week’s featured projects address bridging societal gaps and emphasize the importance of creating opportunities for social interaction and dialogue between diverse communities. By taking a look at the projects below, you will learn how each student project proposes a space that promotes inclusivity and fosters community connections.

Center for Tolerance by Rebecca Dejenie, B.Arch‘23
The Boston Architectural College | Advisors: Peter Martin and Robert Gillig

This design imagines the Roxbury Crossing station as a free station as it becomes a new node for the city of Boston. The Center for Tolerance is a civic building that would allow different activities from music studios, makerspaces, food court, material exchange library, multi-purpose classrooms, exhibits, offices, studios, therapy clinics, and meditation spaces, to gardens with seats to encourage users to sit and converse with one another. As the site is located on the border of two neighborhoods, it will provide a spatial bridge for people from different backgrounds to come together to heal. This building will be used as a resource for all – especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. This building is a representation of what equity in the built environment can look like.

This project was awarded the Best of B. Arch Degree Project 2023.

Dis-Luxury from Luxury: Inequality Brought by Consumerism and Luxury Reimagining by Eduardo A. Caraballo-Arroyo B.Arch ‘23
Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico | Advisors: Pedro A. Rosario-Torres, Luis V. Badillo-Lozano & Manuel De Lemos-Zuazaga

In Curitiba, Brazil, an architectural project is reimagining luxury and addressing social division to foster a community that values inclusivity, sustainability, and social equity. By challenging the pursuit of material wealth and status, this project aims to create an inclusive society where individuals feel fulfilled and valued. The project recognizes that luxury is often associated with abundance and comfort but can lead to marginalization, inequality, scarcity, and disconnection within communities. In a capitalist and consumerist society, luxury is marketed as an asset of ease and comfort, perpetuating social divisions and excluding those who cannot afford it. To address this problem, the architectural project seeks to interconnect both ends of the wealth spectrum through spaces that foster communication, action, and self-development.

The objective is to design an urban-social space that combines the rewards and necessities derived from luxury. This space offers physiological resources, developmental opportunities, a sense of belonging, and luxurious experiences, becoming a social equalizer and a support system for the community. By emphasizing the emotions associated with luxury, such as power, confidence, security, and contemplation/enjoyment, the project creates spaces for interactions and community communication. Elements such as small-scale farming, community/cultural integration, open spaces for social and community activities, and emancipatory and cultural educational spaces are included in the program. The project also aims to reduce limitations by embracing degrowth and minimalist systems.

The main strategy revolves around luxury as an emotional reaction. Luxury consumption triggers psychological responses associated with trust, power, contentment, and security. The architectural design incorporates pathways and axes that lead towards focus areas, lifting the first level and creating porous volumes to enhance openness and connection. Strategically positioned openings offer views towards the focus areas, creating voids and spaces that provide experiential and spatial experiences. By implementing this design, the project aims to address luxury inequality, foster social cohesion, and create spaces that promote inclusivity, equal access to resources, and a sense of well-being for all members of society. Through its transformative power, this project challenges conventional notions of luxury and redefines its role in creating a more connected and equitable world.

Instagram: @_eaca23

Kordilyera Vernacular Inspired Interpretive Center in Paradise Hills, San Diego by Greco Cosente, B. Arch ‘23
NewSchool of Architecture and Design |Advisor: Raúl Díaz

With historical and cultural aspects of Paradise Hills being mainly single-family dwellings from the 1950s and its relation to the military, specifically the navy, a demographic group of the Filipino population has emerged throughout the years. Generic designs of suburban parks do not cater to the needs of the current population. In an attempt to advance green space, park designs drawing from culture with the architectural language of pavilions are explored. The project caters to bridging the gap between community park design and Filipino residents through a Kordilyera-inspired Interpretive Center in Paradise Hills, San Diego; A reinstitution of cultural identity for U.S.-born Filipino-Americans.

The project was awarded the Outstanding Design Award – Degree Project.

U Belong: A New Live/Work Housing Prototype by Jada Rezac and Margaret Phillips, M. Arch ‘23
Kansas State University |Advisor: Zhan Chen – Assistant Professor

The current housing crisis in the US challenges architecture to address a critical need while presenting the opportunity to propose new solutions. The studio, titled: In With the New, operates as a laboratory in which to explore innovative possibilities for multi-family living. Students design new models that reframe housing as a multi-faceted domain, able to navigate various scenarios and support diverse communities.

Jada and Margaret’s project responds to the evolving needs of contemporary living by integrating residential units and workspaces. The project uses a calibrated arrangement of U-shaped modules to create new possibilities for both living and working.

The unit clusters maintain a high degree of porosity, which allows more access to natural light and promotes cross ventilation. These considerations enhance human comfort and productivity while presenting an innovative strategy for improving the overall health of its inhabitants.

The relationship between living and working units and their arrangement also seeks to alleviate social isolation. The units are grouped into smaller neighborhoods, fostering familiarity and more meaningful social interactions. Communal spaces within these neighborhoods and intersecting circulation paths also help build a stronger sense of community within a large complex.

The project was nominated for the Nominated for the Heintzelman Prize at Kansas State University.

Instagram: @jadarezac ; @margaret_rose_phillips ; @studiozhan

See you next week for the next installment of the Student Showcase!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part X

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Welcome back to another week of the Study Architecture Student Showcase! In Week X, we shift our focus to student projects that address the urgent and critical challenges posed by natural disasters. The devastating impact of natural calamities often necessitates innovative and resilient design solutions to ensure the safety and well-being of communities. This week’s featured projects go beyond traditional architectural approaches, presenting thought-provoking concepts that explore resiliency and transformation in the face of adversity.

Resiliency and Transformation in Appalachia by William Robert Clark, M.Arch‘23
University of California, Berkeley | Advisor: René Davids

This past summer, Eastern Kentucky was hit with record breaking rain which caused floods killing dozens of people and destroying millions of dollars of infrastructure and property. While discussion and design around flood resiliency is not new, these events in Central Appalachia create a new opportunity to reimagine the idea of resiliency, and how it applies to some of our smallest and most isolated communities. Drawn from precedents of industrial mining infrastructure, the design seeks to maximize the safety and wellbeing of the community, while minimizing the exposed footprint of the site. The result is a systematic transformation of the landscape and community environment. Ultimately, ‘Resiliency and Transformation in Appalachia’ is meant to be a provocation against longstanding habits of living so that communities can find stability in an extreme environment.

This provocation takes form in a series of towers, which emerge from base of the mountain along the river’s edge. The design challenge of these towers wasn’t the flooding or the extreme topography, it was how to design around the people, and the lives they wish to lead in connection with their landscape. This turned the core driver of the design to minimize the feeling that one is living within a tower. Each unit has its own individual “yard,” and floor plates are suspended by cables, eliminating the use of columns. A series of bridges connect the residential spaces back into the mountain, allowing the forest to meet the tower, and to provide a buffer for the community programs along the ground. The towers are connected by a Hollow (hol-er) Bridge, allowing residents to travers up through the towers, as if they were walking up through the mountain valley to their neighbors. This bridge meets the tower at a common area, which serves a variety of community functions. Along the ground, community spaces are connected by a greenway along the railroad tracks, which serve both pedestrian and commercial use. The towers create a form that is resilient in emergencies, protecting its residents and their spaces, but the design pushes to maintain a way of life, inseparable from the mountains.

Instagram: @robert_clark_arch, @r.davids

Augmented Reality for Emergency Responders by Krunali Shah & Mary Riccio, B.Arch ‘23
New Jersey Institute of Technology  | Advisor: Andrzej Zarzycki

The studio combined advanced building technology and resiliency knowledge with virtual/augmented reality and ubiquitous computing. We showed various aspects and scales of smart designs. The project was a combination of knowledge in the development of building systems and components and the integration of smart technology. The goal was to seamlessly weave ubiquitous environments with many computational devices and systems. It is a testament to adapting our physical space to the modern environment. The purpose of this project is to improve the efficiency of emergency responders by using augmented reality (AR) platforms interfaced with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. By implementing sensors throughout the building, information on occupancy and temperature can be collected. Emergency maps can be placed on each floor as markers to be viewed in 3D using HoloLens/smartphone. These maps will provide information on room temperatures, and occupancy, and can highlight egress/emergency paths from the map’s location. This system aims to ensure safety and decrease emergency response times. The primary focus will be creating a plan to respond to emergency fire incidents. The design intent is to develop an Internet of Things technology that focuses on enhancing the safety of the building occupants and supporting emergency responders. The primary focus will be creating a system to respond to emergency fire incidents. Future adaptations of this system can be used in crises with intruders, shooters, earthquakes, hurricanes, natural disasters, and power outages. Another advancement would be to add the ability to run without any direct electrical power source. Advancing the IoT systems during situations where the sensor stops working, storing the last meaningful communication, and setting up the last will of the device will add a safety net for when the system shuts down. One major component to enhance efficiency is for the device to automatically recognize what room it is in and provide egress through a 3D Augmented Reality model using map image targets.

Instagram: @krunali_shahh, @maryric

Interrogating Boundaries: Miami Lines of Endurance by Alexandra Wise, Maryam Basti, M.Arch ‘23
University of Miami | Advisor: Shawna Meyer

Miami, Florida faces pressing environmental and social challenges that require the city to rapidly adapt to ever-changing conditions like rising sea levels and an increased rate of severe tropical storms. An in-depth understanding of existing edge conditions and the social, environmental, and governmental implications of the US Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Storm Risk Management Study was needed to develop a project that serves to fortify the city’s edges while letting nature regain control. An ecotypic response to these challenges, the Brickell Key Disaster Outpost Center and Ferry Terminal breaks the intrusive barriers that disconnect the land from the sea. By dissolving existing hard edges and rebuilding with softer and looser conditions that accept and evolve with the dynamic environmental forces that exist at the site. The elevated building complex prepares for the rising sea and monumental king tides while reducing its footprint in the landscape. The outpost center and ferry terminal provide a haven for those affected by catastrophes by facilitating movement and providing equitable access to disaster relief resources. This project was awarded the Integrated studio Prize.

Instagram: @u_soa, @ateliermey, @maryam.basti, @_alexwise

See you next week for the next installment of the Student Showcase!